Following an interesting conversation on FB with a “conservative” novusordo priest who can’t seem to make up his mind to jump into the deep end of the Faith. He says that my rational and objective assessment of the last couple of pontificates as failures is a counsel of “despair”. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were playing the “long game” you see… I suspect that, as the pastor of a “cluster” of parishes with … shall we call it a “kaleidoscope” of Catholics, he is more interested in keeping his life quiet than in facing up to the inescapable logical conclusions.

Hey, y’all know that whole neo-conservative thing about how “the youth” is all onside and the hippie-dippy dinosaurs are going to die off and everything’s going to be fine? Yeah, not so much. Young U.S. Catholics overwhelmingly accepting of homosexuality ~

Are you an effective team? Don’t ever not be an effective team. ~ Years ago, in fact, about 2003, as the culmination of a long period of research (on the religious life) I realized that the rift in the Church was worse than I had been led to believe from what we then categorized as the “conservative” Catholic writers. This was the uncomfortable moment that I “tradded,” and though I’ve never wished I could go back to not knowing what I know, the understanding hasn’t come without a cost.

Yes, there are a few of us here. ~

Apparently Mike and I had exactly the same thought on exactly the same day. Mine is here. We great minds should have editorial staff meetings more often, I guess. Francis, Kasper and Luther all more or less have the same idea: “ “Heroic virtue isn’t for ordinary people. It’s not for everyone. Just for the special ones. For ordinary people, we’ve made up a new kind of mercy.

In his Exhortation of Desolation, Francis, unbelievably, trots out the OLDEST FECKING CLICHE IN THE BOOK extraordinary assertion that “the Gospel itself tells us not to judge or condemn.” Catholics, who have spent the last three years putting up with his apparently inexhaustible supply of insults, fall off their chairs laughing in unison. (Siesmologists around the world dive under their desks.) The comment comes in the context of how we should be nicer to people who are unable to live up to the “ideal of the Gospel and the Church’s teaching,” and “help them to treat the weak with compassion, avoiding aggravation or unduly harsh or hasty judgements.

No, it isn’t shopped. It was what they did at the “Jubilee for Teens” on Saturday. Because not only has reality become weirder than we can imagine, it’s gone completely frickin’ insane. I spend a day or two home with the flu and this happens! Shee-it, planet earth! I can’t leave you alone for five minutes! ~

Yeah, so, y’all know that Asteroid I’ve been talking about for years and years? Turns out it’s not going to come down from the sky so much as up from the ground. _ The volume of the newly imaged, deeper reservoir is a whopping 11,000 cubic-miles (46,000 cubic kilometers), which is about the volume of Long Island with 9 miles of hot rock piled on it, or 300 Lake Tahoes.

Cardinal Marx: “No situation in which someone is excluded forever.” As Steve suggested on Twittface, there’s been a bit of a change of tone. Not that long ago, we had the very adversarial Marx shouting [at CDF head Cardinal Muller] that no matter what the Vatican did, they were going to go ahead and do whatever they wanted anyway. (As if we all didn’t know that they’re doing it now.

5 Major Earthquakes In 48 Hours As A Seismologist Warns ‘Catastrophic Mega Earthquakes’ Are Coming. Why is the crust of the Earth shaking so violently all of a sudden? Earthquake swarm breaks out near Yellowstone / Hebgen Lake Two earthquakes above magnitude 3 shake up Southern California Ecuador rocked by second earthquake, days after bigger quake killed nearly 500 Yellowstone Caldera, huh? Can you say, “extinction level event”? I knew you could.